Harbaughs believe in brother-in-law Tom Crean at Georgia: ‘He’s like a jackhammer’

Tom Crean’s brother-in-law was along for the hour-and-10-minute ride from Purdue’s campus to Indianapolis. They were returning from Indiana’s second to last game of the 2016-17 basketball season, which ended in an 86-75 loss, and the writing was starting to appear on the proverbial wall. More than likely, after nine seasons, Crean was going to be let go.

Never mind the fact that Indiana suffered a couple of crucial injuries that changed the make-up of that team, which was one year removed from a Big Ten title. Never mind the fact that Crean directed Indiana, after an initial three years of heavy NCAA penalties from to the previous coaching staff, to three Sweet 16s.

There was enough buzz at this point to suggest Indiana may part ways with Crean. So on this ride from West Lafayette, John Harbaugh, the Baltimore Ravens head coach who happens to be Crean’s wife Joani’s brother, offered some words of wisdom to the then-embattled Hoosier.

“Tom, this is going to be the greatest thing that ever happened to you,” Harbaugh told Crean. “This will be the start of the rest of your life.”

It may not have seen like it in the moment. Coaching Indiana was a dream job scenario. Indiana is a blue-blood program with a rich history.

But Harbaugh’s point was this: Crean is deeply committed to the job he currently has. At Indiana, he established many relationships and was invested emotionally to the program. It would be easy to be angry. Crean had an argument to be angry, in fact. He turned Indiana back into a relevant Big Ten program. People forget the first three years – probation, scholarship reductions and limits on recruiting. And still, Indiana became nationally relevant again.

But Crean didn’t get Indiana to a Final Four or win a national championship. Crean drew criticism from local fans and media as a result. After nine seasons, Crean and Indiana weren’t a match anymore.

“It’s really easy and sit there and get upset about what was wrong,” Crean said. “But at the end of the day there was a heck of a lot more that was right. There were a lot more pluses than minuses. And then you learn.”

What he learned

After 18 consecutive seasons as a head coach – nine at Marquette and nine at Indiana – Crean took a year off from coaching. That didn’t mean he stopped working. The highly-energetic Crean embarked on a tour of sorts. He visited the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers, sitting in on meetings to take notes on how to improve his own coaching style with player development.

He met with the NFL’s Los Angeles Chargers and attended a joint training camp practice between the New England Patriots and Houston Texans. He caught a workout with NBA superstars Dwyane Wade and LeBron James. He detailed his year of learning in a Sports Illustrated story published in February.

Most prominently, he took a job with ESPN as a college basketball analyst.

“He got on TV, he did a good job for us at ESPN,” ESPN analyst Dick Vitale said. “He stayed in the game. He’s been to clinics, he’s been out to recruiting camps. He was keeping himself really ready for that moment.”

The year off served as a refresher course for Crean. He stayed active and motivated, but watched instead of lead. And exactly a year apart – March 16, 2017 to March 16, 2018 – his next opportunity came.

Georgia first offered former Ohio State head coach Thad Matta its job, which was open after Mark Fox was ousted following his nine seasons at the helm. Matta was close to accepting but ultimately declined. Georgia turned its attention to Crean, who took the job without visiting the campus.

Knowing from afar, Crean was ready to get back to the kind of work he was long accustomed to doing.

“I think I learned even more detail, and what detail and level of detail, goes into the great player,” Crean said at his introductory news conference. “And how the great player has got a mindset, a killer instinct, so to speak, that they want to continue to compete at that level. And they expect everybody that can do something about it to do the same thing. The great ones are not afraid to bring that out and it’s OK to be demanding.”

Why Georgia

Georgia has long been dubbed a sleeping giant in basketball. But for whatever reason, the Bulldogs have never been able to put together long strings of winning seasons. Hugh Durham led Georgia to its only Final Four. Tubby Smith got the Bulldogs to their only other Sweet 16 appearance.

Jim Harrick was starting to turn Georgia basketball into one of its most exciting eras, only to have it end in scandal. Since Harrick’s firing in 2003, Georgia has only been to three NCAA Tournaments. Each appearance ended in a first-round loss. Each appearance was also as a double-digit seed.

Crean looks to change that.

Soon.

“I know one thing, and I can tell you this,” Harbaugh said. “He’s not thinking rebuild. He’s thinking, ‘Go right now.’ That’s definitely his mindset.”

With the recruiting talent throughout the state, it made too much sense for Crean to jump back into coaching at Georgia. Thus far, Crean has been quite public – the opposite of the previous coach’s approach – about his team and its progress.

Crean has called for multiple news conferences on his own accord. He said he wanted reporters to watch some of the spring workouts but was unable to make that happen since it would be an NCAA violation. Assistant coaches won’t be off limits to speak with moving forward.

Crean went off of social media during the end of his tenure at Indiana, but is back on and quite active. He has posted videos of his players partaking in summer workouts. Crean has taken the initiative to promote Georgia basketball, whether on Twitter, in numerous media interviews or handing out Chick-fil-A sandwiches at the Tate Student Center.

“I always thought about an old saying back when I was at Marquette: Who motivates the motivator?” Crean said. “You can’t rely on somebody to do that. You have to find your ways. For me, it’s very easy. Learning is like energy to me. The more I learn about Georgia, you learn about the game or your team, and then being able to bring it to your life. When you’re not coaching, you can bring it to life.”

A Crean practice

Crean’s other famous brother-in-law – Michigan football head coach Jim Harbaugh – has seen him hard at work numerous times.

Whether it was at Marquette or Indiana, Jim had an interesting description of a Crean practice.

“It reminds me of a beaver dam being built,” Jim said. “Everybody’s doing something, everybody’s working. Tom’s coaching every minute. Move here, move there. Then all of a sudden the ball moves to where he moved somebody. It’s really impressive. How much he sees and how much he’s taking in, every second, is really impressive. He’s like a jackhammer. It’s from one thing to the next, to the next. I’ve seen it for 25 years. The work ethic at the highest level.”

Crean’s life revolves around three aspects – faith, family and basketball. Basketball just so happens to take up a large portion of each day. Before his family closed on a house in the Athens area, Crean was staying in a room at the University of Georgia Center for Continuing Education & Hotel. That gave him a walking-distance commute to Stegeman Coliseum.

Told of Jim’s beaver dam description, Crean smiled and slightly laughed.

“We’re never just breaking down offense or breaking down defense,” Crean said. “There’s more than one component to it. There’s a lot of energy. There’s a lot of movement. There’s a lot of activity. There’s a lot of intensity. There’s pushing yourself over where your fatigue level makes you want to slow down. I think your team can take on your personality.”

John Harbaugh recalled catching a practice at Marquette when Wade was on his roster. The walls were padded in the practice gym – something Crean said he would do after getting the Georgia job – to protect his players in the event they hustled themselves into it.

But the physicality exhibited in front of John had him thinking Crean was directing a football practice.

“The Georgia kids, if they’re blue collar, if they have a pit bull mindset, and if they want to compete and play really hard, it’s a match made in heaven,” John said.

Crean’s devotion to basketball oftentimes earns him an “obsessed” label. Jim Harbaugh isn’t a fan of that.

“I think the lazy people describe those type of people as crazy,” Jim said. “But they’re just dedicated. Those are things I’ve noticed about Tom.”

New relationships

It would have been odd to leave Indiana after a Big Ten title. But in retrospect, Crean said that might not have been the worst idea. He didn’t feel he was getting the level of support needed from the Indiana administration, led by athletics director Fred Glass.

That doesn’t mean Crean is bitter about the way things ended. It just means he could have avoided termination by starting fresh elsewhere after a big season.

“Then again, if we leave a year earlier, I’m not sitting here,” Crean said. “If we leave a year earlier, I don’t have another year’s worth of relationships that I had with those guys that we had. That’s invaluable.”

In the end, Crean is proud of his time at Indiana. He got to coach numerous NBA players, such as Victor Oladipo, Yogi Ferrell and Cody Zeller, along with graduating every player who spent four years with the team. He made countless friends in the Bloomington community.

At Georgia, new relationships are underway. He commended Georgia’s athletics department for being “professional” since taking the job. He has reached out to former players, to ensure that everyone who previously played for Georgia is welcome to catch a practice.

When Crean was hired, women’s basketball coach Joni Taylor was preparing for an NCAA Tournament second-round game against Duke. Due to Taylor’s schedule, she was unable to attend Crean’s introductory news conference and she apologized to him in a text message.

They then started talking basketball, with that leading to a lengthy back-and-forth on what to do against the Blue Devils.

“I said, ‘I’m watching film on Duke, trying to figure out their matchup zone,’” Taylor said. “We must’ve spent 20-to-30 minutes texting back and forth about basketball. For him to take the time to do that with me after just getting the job, with so many things on his plate, just really said a lot about who he was.”

When Crean got the Georgia job, he texted John Harbaugh and said the first thing that came to mind was the conversation from their ride back from Purdue.

Jim Harbaugh could also sense excitement from Crean about his new job at Georgia when they briefly communicated about it.

But their text messages were brief, Jim recalled, because Crean had a new job to get to.

“There’s no time for high fives or nostalgia or celebration or parties,” Jim said. “It’s on to work. That’s what he did.”